the air for yards about with their sentiment-provoking fragrance; tulips, red and yellow; sometimes a tall, imperial iris; here and there little white nodding companies of jonquils.  Here and there, too, the dusty-green reaches were pointed by the dark spire of a cypress, alone, in a kind of glooming isolation; here and there a blossoming peach or almond, gaily pink, sent an inexpressible little thrill of gladness to one’s heart.  The air was sweetened by many incense-breathing things besides the violets,—­by moss and bark, the dew-laden grass, the moist brown earth; and it was quick with music:  bees droned, leaves whispered, birds called, sang, gossiped, disputed, and the Rampio played a crystal accompaniment.

John swung onwards at ease, while lizards, with tails that seemed extravagantly long, fled from before his feet, terrible to them, no doubt, as an army with banners, for his Turkish slippers, though not in their pristine youth, were of scarlet leather embroidered in a rich device with gold.  And presently (an experience unusual at that hour in the olive wood) he became aware of a human voice.

“Ohe!  My good men, there!  Will you be so kind as to gather me some of those anemones?  Here is a lira for your pains.”

It was a feminine voice; it was youthful and melodious; it was finished, polished, delicately modulated.  And its inflection was at once confident and gracious,—­clearly the speaker took it for granted that she would receive attention, and she implied her thanks abundantly beforehand.  It was a voice that evoked in the imagination a charming picture of fresh, young, confident, and gracious womanhood.

“Hello!” said John to himself.  “Who is there in this part of the world with a voice like that?”

And he felt it would not be surprising if on glancing round he should behold—­as, in fact, he did—­the stranger of yesterday, the Unknown of the garden.

II

She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming picture indeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the olives), and was calling down to a couple of peasants at work on the other side of the stream.  Between the thumb and forefinger of an ungloved fair right hand, she held up a silver lira.

Anemones, said she!  Near to where the men were working, by the river’s brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred feet long, and tapering from half that breadth to a point.  And this was simply crimson and purple with a countless host of anemones.

She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have thought they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding.  But they didn’t.  Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic stare, as if in doubt whether conceivably she could have the impertinence to be addressing them, and vouchsafing not a word, each went calmly on with his employment;—­very, very calmly, piano,